See? He just comes out and says it, but nobody calls him on it. He stood in front of a huge number of people and said that unfettered access to information just caused trouble, and intimated that we should use only ‘approved’ sources of information for our decision making. I believe that’s what every fascist, socialist, or totalitarian government has said since the beginning of civilization.

Yeh, I bet it’s inconvenient when people can see what you do every day, especially when what you do every day is opposed to everything this country has stood for since it’s founding.

While knowledge is power, the information age could be too much of a good thing. That’s the message some heard in President Obama’s weekend commencement speech in which he bemoaned

Speaking at Hampton University in Virginia, the president raised alarms when he said “information becomes a distraction, a diversion” that is putting “pressure on our country and on our democracy.”

The president suggested less is more when it comes to absorbing news content and urged graduates to take a skeptical eye toward news from blogs, cable television and radio as well as modern gadgets like iPods and PlayStations.

The class of 2010 is “coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank that high on the truth meter,” the president said, earning an honorary doctorate of laws degree during the ceremony.

“And with iPods and iPads; and Xboxes and PlayStations — none of which I know how to work — (laughter) — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. So all of this is not only putting pressure on you; it’s putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy,” he said.

But coming from a commander-in-chief known for his fondness for technology and skill at employing it to his political advantage, Obama’s comments were seen as more than just a president’s lament that the Kindle could someday replace the hardcover.

“Nobody (has) used the media more masterfully” than Obama, said Brent Bozell, president of the conservative Media Research Center. “Now he turns against certain elements of it because he doesn’t need them anymore, he thinks.”